For the last 7 years I have experienced a really weird allergy. The dermatologist that I saw called it dermatographism. I am allergic to pressure applied to my skin and temperature change....like if I were to carry a heavy box or gallon of ice cream. It's the craziest thing I've ever heard. People think I'm joking when I say tell them this. You can literally barley scratch my skin like a tic tac toe game and my skin will rise. (The dermatologist also said that if I ever jumped in a cold pool on a hot day that I would die because my body would go into shock...)They have me taking 180 mg of allegra in the morning and 60 mg more at night. If I don't take it..I itch terribly..like an under the skin itch. I am desperately searching for the answer to why my skin does this...I don't want to just take meds the rest of my life...I want to know what the problem is and what I can do to make it better....I still itch even after taking all that allegra. Am I the only one experiencing this?? Does anyone have any answers for me?? Please help!?!

Sheesh! That doesn't sound fun. Seems like the treatment I had done for my allergies might be able to help you. I had quirky reactions myself and the only thing that's helped me is neuromodulation. The treatments involve muscle response tests with accupressure and results in retraining your nervous system on how to react correctly to things that shouldn't be bothering you. Neuromodulation Technique (http://www.neuromodulationtechnique.com/Patients/6_TxCandidate.cfm) is the website. Health Insurance generally doesn't cover it and my treatments are about $80/visit. If you are interested in the treatment and have questions in regards to how it works, I would be glad to post my unprofessional answers as a patient. It's a permanent healing solution and I haven't reacted (and missed my usual day of work for recovery from reaction) for over two months now (I've had about 6 treatments and will probably need 3 or 4 more). The website has a list of practitioners and if you find one near you, I would give a call and maybe ask if they thought the treatment could help your particular set of allergies.

I would be willing to try anything at this point. I mean I don't really have the money to do that but I would like information concerning that treatment. Did you have similar problems? Can they tell you upfront how many treamtments you need? Why doesn't insurance cover it?...do they think it's a scam?..this treament would make sense..I just wonder why drs don't recommend anthing besides drugs. Was your dr ok with you getting it? Are there side effects? What exactly do they do poke you with stuff?

I would be willing to try anything at this point. I mean I don't really have the money to do that but I would like information concerning that treatment. Did you have similar problems? Can they tell you upfront how many treamtments you need? Why doesn't insurance cover it?...do they think it's a scam?..this treament would make sense..I just wonder why drs don't recommend anthing besides drugs. Was your dr ok with you getting it? Are there side effects? What exactly do they do poke you with stuff?

I didn't have similar problems, just equally as quirky, and I didn't know what they were coming from (ie-i went through an automatic car wash and 10 minutes later my eyes were swelled shut-various "un-namable" chemicals i would react to). They say it usually takes 6-12 visits although it depends on how the treatments affect your body. Insurance doesn't usually cover it because it's "alternative" medicine. This treatment is only two years old though, so a lot of doctors don't know about it. So far it's been very successful (I can vouch for that myself) and the clinic I go to is going to have a doctor from the mayo clinic show up to do further research on it (so it's beginning to get noticed by the medical community). Personally, I now think allergists are the scam artists (but that's based on my personal reaction to traditional treatments).

The actually treatment is a little hard to describe and sounds a little weird. Basically the practitioner asks your body a question and your body will answer. It's a muscle response test with your arm. If someone had told me this a year ago, I wouldn't have believed it. But, then my eyes started swelling shut every two weeks (and would take around 2 days for the swelling to go down), so I became desperate to try something else. After the practitioner determines answers to questions from your muscle's response, an accupressure tool is used. It's kind of a simple massage tool that vibrates down on either side of your spinal column. Have I scared you off yet? You can read more about it on the website (http://www.neuromodulationtechnique.com/welcomepatients.cfm). It's based on neurophysiology. Patients usually have their own reaction to the treatment. For me the first few treatments actually made my eyes swell up as you are sort of "purging" things from your body and i had to get a lot of sleep. The last reaction I had to treatment just involved a lot of mucous "expelling" for about a day. But the practitioner said all people react differently.

Here's what the website says about allergies:
NMT is also a very rapid and effective way of correcting all allergies – not only those to foods, inhalants, and other external substances; but to body tissues and body chemicals. Allergy is really an error in "tagging" of incoming sensation that tells us we have been exposed to some material. This error provokes the immune system into a defensive response that results in the allergy symptoms we experience. NMT attempts to correct the erroneous "tagging", and thereby stops the allergy behavior. NMT addresses the faulty process at the heart of all allergies – so it is usually much faster, and more effective than methods that require treatment of each allergen.

...actually, that makes a lot mo sense..there has to be a reason why our bodies reacte weird to things...so you never experienced anything until one day you went through a car wash...had you gone through one before and it didn't bother you? Cause they told me this stuff is stress related..I believe it. Our bodies were probably exposed to it at one time and unbothered since our stress levels weren't that high at the time. I'm going to check out that site...if I'd like to bring it up to my PCP but...she probably will say she doesn't recommend it. Thanks for the help!

I've actually been a lifelong allergy sufferer (and had the allergist skin tests and shot treatments and tried all the drugs around) but the eye swelling began about 4 years ago. I remember my first "swell shut" reaction when someone sprayed a lawn with pesticide near where I was working. I then started having "swell shuts" to all kinds of things including dogs & cats as well. When my throat started to swell shut along with eyes, I realized I was maybe not so far away from suffocating or perhaps anaphalactic shock, so that was when I decided my VISA card could cover trying alternative treatments. Probably more than you wanted to know about my allergies, but if you're miserable and unhealthy neuromodulation is affordable!! My nurse friend told me the other day, that I just don't sneeze anymore, and I dont' get the sniffles from being around her dog now. Good luck.

Thanks. I am going to look into it. Wow...you had quite bad allergies...allergies are sooo weird.